Some of the things Republicans tell me are astonishing. For someone to believe some of the absurd things many Republicans believe, they really have to be willfully ignorant. While there are numerous examples of this, I’d thought I’d run through five quick examples to prove my point.

1. So-called “Religious Freedom”: This is a phrase uttered by people who claim their religion is “under attack” because they can’t discriminate against homosexuals or women. Not only that, but for some reason these folks tend to think that their religious beliefs should somehow dictate the private love lives of other people. Somehow these people have equated the word “freedom” with restricting the rights of others. Like I said, you have to be willfully ignorantto think “freedom” somehow equals “restriction.”

2. Tax Cuts Create Jobs: How many decades is income inequality going to have to get worse, while corporate profits soar and our national debt continues to skyrocket, before Republicans finally realize tax cuts don’t do anything but make rich people… richer? Are there actually people who really think big corporations and fat-cat executives are thinking, “Hmm, you know, I’d hire more people if we just got a tax cut.”

Jobs are created by one of the simplest rules in economics: Demand.

If demand for a certain product or service goes up, a company will then hire the necessary people to meet that demand. If the demand is not there, it doesn’t matter if their tax rate is zero – they’re not going to hire more people.

There’s absolutely zero link between tax cuts and job creation.

3. The Economy is Worse Now Than Before President Obama: When President Obama came into office, we were literally shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs every single month. Now we’re in the midst of the longest streak of private-sector job growth in U.S. history, creating over 13 million jobs. Is the economy perfect? Of course not. But to say it’s worse now than it was in January 2009 when Barack Obama became president isn’t just wrong – it’s flat-out stupid.

If someone honestly and truly thinks the economy is worse now than in 2008 or 2009, I’m going to assume that person is no older than 5-years-old and simply wasn’t alive back then to realize how horrible things were.

4. Guns Don’t Kill People: Whenever someone tells me that guns are no more dangerous than a spoon, I always like to ask just how many mass killings have been carried out with that particular utensil?

Can a gun kill on its own? No. Clearly it takes a human being firing said gun to kill people. That being said, a rocket-propelled grenade sitting harmlessly in a safe also needs a human being to fire it for it to become deadly.

Now, who here thinks the United States would be safer if we had 300+ million rocket-propelled grenades saturating our neighborhoods?

The fact is, the combination of the ease of access to guns we have in this country thanks in large part to the GOP and the NRA, plus human beings who intend to use them for deadly purposes, combines to make a volatile situation.

So, while a gun by itself can’t kill someone, our gun culture and the easy access to guns we have in this country does kill people.

5. Their Top 2 Presidential Candidates were Donald Trump and Ted Cruz: I know this is a bit of a “cheap shot,” but it’s true. In 2012, a commonly told joke among liberals was that Republicans couldn’t do worse than Mitt Romney.

The GOP elected Trump, yes, that’s true. But let’s not forget that the man who came in second place to him was Cruz — who might even be worse.

Not only that, both Trump and Cruz are, by far, two of the biggest liars in politics. Almost nothing that comes out of their mouths is true. It’s actually a testament to the true nature of the modern-day Republican party – and how devoid of factual information much of the party seems to be – that the two most dishonest candidates in either party were their two frontrunners.

Allen Clifton is a native Texan who now lives in the Austin area. He has a degree in Political Science from Sam Houston State University. Allen is a co-founder of Forward Progressives and creator of the popular Right Off A Cliff column and Facebook page. Be sure to follow Allen on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to his channel on YouTube as well.